When comparing WhatsApp vs Hangouts, the Slant community recommends Hangouts for most people. In the question“What is the best team chat software?”Hangouts is ranked 11th while WhatsApp is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Hangouts is:

Google offers all features of Hangouts completely free on iOS, Android and web with quick and reliable sync across all platforms. It's also tightly integrated in other Google services - it can be accessed from services such as Gmail, Google+, Chrome.
While the standard Hangouts offering is completely free, there are business, education and government solutions that increase the participant count to for video calls to 15 and offers support that may cost money.

Pros

Pro

Straightforward interface

The interface is very simple, fast and easy to use. You can start using it as soon as the app has been downloaded - it does not require setting anything up or registering. You can communicate with anyone in your contacts list that also uses WhatsApp. Includes useful features like seeing when a contact is currently available or typing.

Pro

Effortlessly builds your contacts by using your phone number as identification

WhatsApp will automatically find all of your contacts currently using Whatsapp and add them to your contacts. This makes it really easy to setup and given that it's the most popular messaging app it's likely that a lot of your contacts are already using it.

Pro

Widely used

WhatsApp reported 800 million users in April, 2015. Your friends are most likely already using WhatsApp, so it's easy to get setup. Also it's the overall highest rated messaging app on the play store.

Pro

Message mirroring on web app

WhatsApp can be used from the desktop via Chrome, Firefox and Opera browsers. Accessing it requires using the Android app to scan the QR code that's presented on web.whatsapp.com.

Pro

One-on-one texts can be encrypted

WhatsApp has implemented end to end encryption for messages sent on it's service. Even WhatsApp has no way to read a users messages.

Pro

Free and cross-platform

Google offers all features of Hangouts completely free on iOS, Android and web with quick and reliable sync across all platforms. It's also tightly integrated in other Google services - it can be accessed from services such as Gmail, Google+, Chrome.

While the standard Hangouts offering is completely free, there are business, education and government solutions that increase the participant count to for video calls to 15 and offers support that may cost money.

Pro

Group video support

If you have signed in your Google account, Hangouts allows making video calls with up to 10 people or one-on-one. There are business, education and government solutions that increase the participant count to for video calls to 15 as well as offers support for those accounts.

Additionally, you can switch between using either the front-facing or rear-facing camera on your phone or tablet.

Pro

Excellent read receipts in group chat

It's possible to know what each and every participant of the group has read. Their icons are displayed below the last message.

Pro

Save and sync your chats across multiple devices

Start chatting on your phone, then on your computer, then on your tablet seamlessly!

Pro

No need to create a separate account if you use any other Google service

Hangouts uses Google account credentials. If you use any other Google service, then you already have an account set up.

Pro

Can share animated GIFs

If you have gifs in your mobile phone, you can share them in the conversation and your partner will be able to see it animated in the chat.

Pro

Google Voice integration

Google Voice is a service that enables making and receiving free phone calls within US. Google Voice forwards incoming calls to all connected devices and allows placing calls from any of the connected devices, but they will show as coming from the Google Voice number.

Hangouts completely integrates Google Voice, allowing you to place calls and receive texts and voicemail from all of your devices. The Hangouts app for Android also includes a needed dialer for making calls with the users Google Voice number.

Pro

Free calls to US and Canada from anywhere in the world

Hangouts app for Android can be extended with an optional dialer for making calls. Most calls to US and Canada are free and international calls have cheap rates.

Pro

Advanced status sharing

Hangouts can inform about the status of other users including what device they are currently using, whether they are in the middle of a call and when were they last seen. This allows making sure that you're not disturbing someone when initiating a conversation. It's possible to granularly turn off status sharing.

Pro

Video tools

Hangouts can add different effects and overlays to video calls that can be viewed on your device. Unfortunately, they can't be set from your phone.

Pro

Chrome browser extension

Use the extension on any computer you can run Chrome browser to text from your computer or tablet!

Pro

Seamless integration with OK Google for voice control and typing

Hangouts can be used completely hands free, even if the app is not open and the phone is locked: "OK Google, send a Hangouts message to Mary".

Cons

Con

Single device

You cannot use the same WhatsApp account on multiple devices (e.g. a tablet, a PC and a cellphone). The account is tied to the device with the specific cellphone number. Chat history is deleted when you sign in to a new account, unless you have created a backup.

Con

Hard to migrate history cross platform

Migrating your chat history from Android to iOS or the other way around is not so simple. In some cases it requires a 3rd party app and in some the only way is to migrate specific chats one by one.

Con

Shares meta data with Facebook

WhatsApp shares your messaging meta data with Facebook if you do not opt-out in the settings. If you use the same phone number for WhatsApp and Facebook, the profiles can easily be linked.See https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/26000016

Con

No cloud sync

Messages are not stored on WhatsApp server for privacy and security reasons.

Con

Limitation on shareable file sizes

WhatsApp now allows users to share files of any type, but there is still a size limit.

Con

Proprietary

Not open source.

Con

Tied to carrier phone number

WhatsApp cannot be used by people without a smart phone with an active cell plan. If your phone is lost or damaged, or if your phone number changes, you cannot get messages sent by friends without them updating your phone number. You cannot send message to them until you are able to get SMS messages at your phone number.

Con

Web interface uses message mirroring

To use your computer to send messages your phone must be on with a consistent data connection.

Con

Lack of end to end encryption

Communications are encrypted between client and Google servers but not from sending client to receiving client. This means that there is still a possibility for someone other than the receiver to read your message if they have access to internal Google servers. But it allows also lightweight chat history search, spam protection and other features.

Con

Transitioning to corporate orientation

Google is turning Hangouts in to a Slack competitor. It's unclear what the future of Hangouts is, but Google has said the consumer Hangouts we now have 'isn't going anywhere.'

Con

Is owned by Google

Google is a cooperation that earns money from collecting data and breaching privacy.

Con

Not available on Windows Phones

There is no Hangouts app for the Windows Phone.

Con

No way to moderate groups

If a member of a group chat room becomes disruptive, or there's some other need, there's no way in Hangouts to remove somebody from an existing chatroom. Similarly, if somebody is no longer active, there's no way to remove that user from the chat room to make slot for new active members.

Con

Doesn't support sending voice notes or video recordings

Currently there is no built in function that supports creating and sending voice notes or video recordings.

Con

Poor interface

The app tends to lag, the design can be confusing and considering that another app has to be installed that supplies another icon in the home screen in order to get a dialer for calls in Hangouts, overall it is very confusing and cluttered.

Con

No rich text editing

On Android you can receive messages with bold or italic text. However, you cannot bold or italicize text on Android, only on iOS devices or via the web interface.

Con

Poor indication of who's online

There is no way to find out if a person in your contact's list is online or not in the Android app.

Con

Poorly manages data

Doesn't cache images well either received or sent. Often users will see the sent images re-downloading, same for conversations.

Con

No customer support

Free product, you're on your own.

Con

Buggy video calls

Whether video calls work on your device is pure lottery, and there's nothing you can do to fix it.

Con

Won't send SMS/MMS anymore

They removed support for sms/mms. The same goes with integration to hangouts.

Con

No SMS/MMS backup

They don't have options to backup sms to cloud.

Con

API support was removed

This change closed options for integrations and connections between similar apps.

Con

SMS messages sent from the web app can't be sent outside North America

SMS messages sent from the web app can only be sent to number in America and Canada - sending to foreign numbers won't work, although you can still receive texts from anywhere.

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